Monday, February 08, 2010

Spoiler Alert

I saw the movie "Book of Eli" this past weekend. If you haven't seen this film, and don't want to read a spoiler, then don't read any farther.

The whole point of the film was to preserve the Bible, which had been virtually eradicated after a global apocalyptic war. At the end of the film, the preserved Bible in written, bound form, was placed on a shelf. On that shelf, just left of the Bible, was a copy of the Torah, and just left of that, was a copy of the Tanakh.

As most of the readers of this blog will know, the Torah is the first five books of the Bible, and the Tanakh is the entire "Old Testament" of the Bible. I found it interesting that the movie makers had sense enough to put these two books on the same shelf as the Bible, but didn't expect movie-goers to catch the plot-hole. I wonder if it was an inside joke, or an oversight.

On a related note, I also watched again the movie "Bruce Almighty". At one point when Bruce was checking the prayers offered to God, he was doing so via a divine electronic email system, and it was not Yahoo!Mail, but rather Yahweh!Mail. How interesting.

3 comments:

Nathan R. Hale said...

How did you like the film overall? I enjoyed it, but felt that there was an element missing that kept it from being top-notch.

Kent West said...

I assume you're referring to "Eli".

I liked it. I don't reckon I've ever seen a movie that couldn't be improved. Do you have something specific in mind that was missing, or just a feeling of something missing in general?

By the way, was Eli blind? If so, odd that he could watch the activities from a height and shoot down a bird. On the other hand, that adds something to the story, methinks.

Nathan R. Hale said...

Yeah, that was the "twist..." He was blind. A lot of stuff makes more sense once you know that...like how he had mad fighting skills (I guess?) and the fact that he wore sunglasses inside. Also he had to touch the body of the dead guy in the house in order to find his new boots.

As far as what was missing...I dunno...a lot of the movie seemed derivative of other movies (I Am Legend, Mad Max, etc - although not in a necessarily bad way) but I wasn't sure if it brought anything new to the table (other than the religious theme...which was pretty interesting).

I also believe there was a Qur'an on the shelf. I wondered if the translation (New King James Version) held any significance.

Definitely a fun movie, but not sure I'd buy it.